The present invention relates to an air conditioner case and in particular, it relates to an air conditioner case employed in an air conditioning system for vehicles.
In recent years, in order to reduce the number of required parts and production costs, air conditioner cases for air conditioning systems in vehicles have been produced with the blower case and the temperature controller case integrated.
At the same time, a structure in which, as shown in FIG. 6 of Japanese Examined Utility Model Publication No. S 62-4720, an air passage (11) is provided on the outside of a scroll nose portion (1b) of a blower case (1) with its periphery defined by the scroll nose portion (1b) and an inclining wall to form a roughly triangular shape in cross section with the two sides in the direction of the axis of the blower blocked off by a wall, a cooling air intake port (7) that communicates with the air passage (11) is provided in an area at the downstream side of the scroll nose portion (1b) and a hose connecting hole (18) where a hose (9) that connects the air passage (11) to the inside of the housing of a blower motor (5) is connected is provided, so that the air that has flowed out to the scroll nose portion (1b) is caused to flow back into the housing of the motor (5) from the cooling air intake port (7) via the air passage (11) and an air passage (9) to cool the blower motor. This structure has become common. It is to be noted that the reference numbers in parentheses in this paragraph indicate the reference numbers used in Japanese Examined Utility Model Publication No. S 62-4720.
Also becoming common is the structure in which, as shown in FIGS. 1 and 2 of Japanese Unexamined Utility Model Publication No. S 62-149414, a cooling air intake chamber (8) is provided adjacent to the scroll nose portion (7) with its periphery defined by a partitioning wall (4), a side wall (2a) and a barrier wall (9) provided diagonally from the end edge of the partitioning wall (4) and bent backward toward the outside, and a regulator (11) to form a roughly triangular shape is provided at the cooling air intake chamber (8) so that the regulator (11) is cooled by the air supplied through an inflow port (10) that communicates between the scroll nose portion (7) and the cooling air intake chamber (8). It is to be noted that the reference numbers in parentheses in this paragraph indicate the numbers used in Japanese Unexamined Utility Model Publication No. S 62-149414.
In an air conditioner case provided with an air passage or a cooling air intake chamber at the scroll nose portion as disclosed in the two publications mentioned above, since the air passage or the cooling air intake chamber is a closed off chamber whose periphery is enclosed by walls, it is necessary to divide the air passage or the cooling air intake chamber if the air conditioner case is to be manufactured by such means as injection molding.
At the same time, in an air conditioner case in which the air blower case and the temperature controller case are constituted as an integrated unit, it is necessary to divide the air conditioner case into upper and lower portions relative to the direction of airflow so that a heat exchanger can be mounted and disengaged with ease.
Thus, when the blower case and the temperature controller case are constituted as an integrated unit while adopting the structure described above for the air passage or the cooling air intake chamber, the air conditioner case must be manufactured by using at least three separate members and bonding them together.
However, manufacturing an air conditioner case in this manner, using three separate members and performing separate processes for the individual members, presents problems in that the number of manufacturing steps to complete the air conditioner case as a whole increases, resulting in more complicated production work and in that the production cost also increases.